The cutter Kozhov, which took us on our sampling cruise. Photo: Kara Woo.

Today is our last day in Bol’shie Koty and we’re wrapping up the last of our sample preparation and packing. We’ve crammed an amazing amount of science into the last week, starting with a three day research cruise along the coast of the southern basin of the lake. As we’ve mentioned before, we’re examining the nearshore food web under varying temperature and nutrient conditions, so we sampled fourteen sites in total between Bol’shoe Goloustnoe to the north and Listvyanka to the south.

At each site we collected algae, invertebrates, and water samples, which we then sorted and processed on the boat. To sample and process four sites in a day took >18 hours, but fortunately we had some great teamwork going on to get it all done. The crew of the cutter Kozhov was fantastically helpful as well.

One of the fun parts of doing nearshore work is in the opportunities for outreach. Many beachgoers and hikers inquired about what we were doing, and we enthusiastically showed off our amphipods and explained our research.

Since returning from the cruise we’ve done a bunch more sample processing, organizing, and cleaning up the explosion of our gear that occurred right after the cruise. We also had time to run one more lab experiment involving Stephanie’s beloved rotifers. This evening we’ll head to Irkutsk, and Monday we begin the long journey back to the States. Here’s to hopefully smooth travels and another successful field season!

Ted, Kara and Michael rowed a bit offshore to collect some water and in the process of prepping to filter it, we saw that we had gathered a huge diversity of rotifers – beautiful microscopic animals that eat algae and bacteria in the lake! Frequently our water samples, even nearshore, have been a monoculture of one type of zooplankton, Epischura, but this time just about every rotifer I’ve ever dreamed I’d see in a single sample is in the water, looking healthy and happy! (Rotifer nerds – read or skip to the end – you know I’ll list them)

Having deployed Ted’s nutrient-algae experiment much more quickly than we had expected (!!), we realized that we now had some moments in between other field work to think about experimenting with rotifers. How could we be at Baikal and not use every waking moment for science? It’s a treasure trove for biologists! The water just offshore right now is full of diverse zooplankton, a great opportunity to look at a whole suite of plankton interactions under varying temperature. So, we were able to turn what might have been a 8-hour workday into a 15-hour workday today, burning images of rotifers on our retinas through microscopes! Yes, I’m excited about this!

We have been thinking about how temperature can alter predator-prey interactions, as various organisms respond differentially to temperature change. We ran some preliminary experiments overnight last night to check our variation in response and timing, and today set out to pick over 300 individuals of 4 species out of concentrated plankton samples. I reminded myself that this is one of my non-transferable skills as an aquatic ecologist – pipetting tiny moving organisms out of a slurry of other tiny moving organisms – may not be useful elsewhere but sure is useful on a day like today!

Kara “Keratella” Woo, shortly before she proclaimed that all those who can catch nauplii have job security, because she is not catching nauplii. She is good at everything else she does! Photo: Stephanie Hampton 18 August 2015

Naturally one species proved to be our nearly indomitable nemesis – the smallest Epischura baikalensis juvenile stages, a life stage of this crustacean called the nauplius (nauplii = plural). Nauplii are really fast, and a pipette under a microscope looks like a telephone pole in an earthquake as you’re trying to catch these guys!

Today is a big day with starting our lab experiment and also doing our nearshore field collections!… more to come…

OK, rotifer nerds, you have been patient (or not – if you skipped straight to the end for my rotifer list!)… Keratella, Filinia, Asplanchna, Kelliocottia, Gastropus, Conochilus, Polyarthra, Synchaeta, Trichocerca… All these were not just present but pretty even in abundance! Asplanchna had loads of Keratella and Gastropus in its guts, and everyone had eggs. A great day for rotifers.

The rotifer Synchaeta in Lake Baikal near Bolshie Koty on 17 August 2015. Photo: Stephanie Hampton

Ted, Kara, and Michael off in the row boat to get lake water, unexpectedly bringing back a cornucopia of rotifer diversity that will monopolize our time for the next 36 hours. 17 August 2015. Photo: Stephanie Hampton

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/an-abundance-of-lake-baikal-rotifers/feed/1sehamptonBaikal_filinia_20150817Baikal_Kara_nauplii_20150818Baikal_synchaeta_20150817OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKeeping an eye on Siberian fireshttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/keeping-an-eye-on-siberian-fires/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/keeping-an-eye-on-siberian-fires/#respondFri, 14 Aug 2015 23:11:50 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1706Continue reading →]]>Many of our friends and colleagues have asked us about the Siberian wildfires occurring around Lake Baikal this summer. The short answer is that we feel safe at Bolshie Koty and smoke here is episodic. This NASA Earth Observatory image is from several days ago – there are more recent NASA images of the smoke on the lake but I like the ones that NASA has annotated like this!

When we initially arrived at Irkutsk State University’s field station in Bolshie Koty on 12 August, we thought we could smell some smoke but it was not too bad and the view was clear. Yesterday (14 August – remember our time zone is 15 hours ahead of the Western U.S.) the smoke became progressively thicker through the day, never bad enough to make us feel that working outside was a problem. In the afternoon Kara took a photo and compared it to the same view from 2012 and you can see that the smoke is thick enough to obscure our normal view.

The view from our dacha steps in July 2012 at Bolshie Koty on Lake Baikal. Photo: Kara Woo

The view from our dacha steps on 14 August 2015 around 5:00 pm at Bolshie Koty on Lake Baikal. Photo: Kara Woo

This photo comparison really drove home to us how much smoke was in the air, and I spent some time reading about fire effects on lakes, particularly on deposition of nutrients. We certainly thought about wildfire effects on Lake Baikal in the review paper that Marianne led in 2009 [PDF], but it is a funny human quirk that a visual really drives home the point! Smoke can contribute a lot of nitrogen to lakes and streams, with more nitrogen, phosphorus, dissolved organic carbon and various cations coming into surface waters in subsequent days and months. It gets very complicated as you consider how hot the fire is, the soil type and other geological aspects of the region, the patterns of subsurface flow, the precipitation pattern, and many other factors!

In any event, I’m very glad to say that we are waking up to a much more clear sky.

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/keeping-an-eye-on-siberian-fires/feed/0sehamptonBaikal_fires_20150808_NASA_Russia_amo_2015220Baikal_BolshieKoty_Woo_20120812Baikal_BolshieKoty_Woo_20150813Baikal_BolshieKoty_Hampton_20150815Commence round 2 of the 2015 Baikal field seasonhttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/commence-round-2-of-the-2015-baikal-field-season/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/commence-round-2-of-the-2015-baikal-field-season/#respondThu, 13 Aug 2015 09:50:14 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1699Continue reading →]]>Following on the heels of Marianne’s group, the second portion of this year’s field crew has made it to Bol’shie Koty. We had a long but uneventful journey to Irkutsk, where we ran some errands and then hopped on the hydrofoil to BK. We felt right at home once we recognized familiar faces among the hydrofoil crew.

Today we set out on a reconnaissance mission and sampling test run. Our broad goal for this season is to examine Baikal’s food web under varying temperature and nutrient conditions. First we hiked north of Bol’shie Koty to scout out potential beaches from which to sample. Then we headed back into town, donned our waders, and collected a few nearshore amphipods and scraped rocks for algae. Our USB microscopes proved tricky to use in the field due to strong glare and scampering critters, but we did manage to capture a few images.

Tomorrow the final member of our team will join us in Bol’shie Koty and the real whirlwind of sampling and experiments will begin!

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/commence-round-2-of-the-2015-baikal-field-season/feed/0karawooHunting for Red Epischurahttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/hunting-for-red-epischura/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/hunting-for-red-epischura/#commentsMon, 10 Aug 2015 03:07:38 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1691Continue reading →]]>It’s a peaceful day with the sun shining brightly in Siberia. The vast expanse of Lake Baikal stretches out across the horizon, framed by mountain peaks. Suddenly a breeze picks up, and it’s time to go out in the rowboat and grab the experiment before the weather changes. On a lake fondly referred to by some as “the adolescent” for it’s rapidly changing behavior, more characteristic of an ocean than a lake, timing is everything.

Deploying the experiment – Photo credit Bart De Stasio

On the Sacred Sea – Photo credit Kristin Huizenga

The team here on Lake Baikal, including Bart De Stasio from Lawrence University, is conducting a bag experiment in the near shore waters of Lake Baikal in an effort to discover the feeding preferences of the local copepod, Epischura. This native to Lake Baikal is incredibly important in the food web. It is often credited with cleaning the lake and is a staple in the transfer of energy from the primary producers of the lake up to the Nerpa, the fresh water seal of Lake Baikal. Through the experiment, we hope to discover which species and the size range of plankton on which Epischura prefer to feed.

Picking Epischura – Photo credit Bart De Stasio

Epischura – Photo credit Bart De Stasio

Sunset on the Sacred Sea – Photo credit Kristin Huizenga

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/hunting-for-red-epischura/feed/1mmoore53EpischuraLovePart1:BellaIMG_5955HuntingForEpischuraIMG_5915IMG_1925Baikal research at the ASLO meeting in Granada Spainhttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/baikal_aslo_2015/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/baikal_aslo_2015/#respondMon, 16 Mar 2015 17:57:01 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1678Continue reading →]]>Several of us recently returned from the international meeting of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, held in Granada Spain this year. One highlight of the meeting for me was our session on “Recent Ecological Change in Ancient Lakes,” which included ancient lakes researchers who are normally scattered all over the world. It was an inspiring session, and looks very likely to lead to a review paper on this topic – stay tuned!

But I’ll admit that for me the most inspiring part of the meeting was listening to Marianne Moore’s very gracious acceptance speech, as she received the prestigious Ramon Margalef Award for Excellence in Education!

After taking some time to express gratitude to her many Russian and American colleagues, including probably 10 more thank-you slides in addition to the one shown above (!), Marianne captivated the audience with an exploration of the parallels between marine ecosystems and Lake Baikal, inviting us to consider how much can be learned by approaching our research with a broader perspective.

Accepting the award this year was a special honor because the ASLO meeting was held in Spain, Ramon Margalef’s home country. It is an understatement to say that Margalef was a prolific and highly esteemed aquatic scientist, accomplished in both freshwater and marine ecology – ASLO published a very nice abbreviated biography of Margalef [PDF] in 2009, in which his research contributions and his innovative approaches to education are described.

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/baikal_aslo_2015/feed/0sehamptonancient_lakes_group_crop_2015ASLO_Moore_MargalefAward_2_2015Algal blooms in Baikalhttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/algal-blooms-in-baikal/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/algal-blooms-in-baikal/#respondFri, 12 Dec 2014 18:06:17 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1665Continue reading →]]>A new paper from Timoshkin et al. in Hydrobiological Journal describes a previously unrecorded phenomenon in Baikal: massive mats of filamentous green algae (Spirogyra and Stigeoclonium) have been appearing in autumn along the shores of the lake.

In the article, “Mass development of filamentous algae of genera Spirogyra and Stigeoclonium (Chlorophyta) in the coastal zone of southern Baikal”, Timoshkin et al. analyze data from the western shore of the lake’s south basin from 2003 and 2008-2013. In the years 2011-2013, late autumn blooms of Spirogyra and Stigeoclonium dominated study sites, replacing the more common Ulothrix zonata. The species of Spirogyra present at these sites, Spirogyra fluviatilis, had not been recorded in the lake before. Such massive blooms of Spirogyra can degrade water quality, say the authors.

The dearth of research on benthic algae in the last 15 years prevents us from determining exactly when these blooms began appearing, but they seem to be a relatively new occurrence. Stigeoclonium blooms were also found in other parts of the lake in 2013: the western shore of Maloe More and the tip of the north basin.

Timoshkin et al. suggest that these blooms may be the result of increased nutrient inputs into the lake. They point out that tourism in the area has increased in recent years, and some settlements near Baikal’s shore lack centralized sewage treatment facilities. However, scientists have not yet demonstrated changes in nutrient levels in these areas, so it is difficult to say with certainty whether the blooms are a result of human impacts or natural cycles.

The link above describes (in Russian) a massive volunteer cleanup effort that recently took place at Lake Baikal. The event was organized by Russian energy group En+ and drew 1500 volunteers from all over Russia and the world, who traveled to Siberia at their own expense to participate. Summer brings many tourists to Lake Baikal, and with the tourists comes litter. This year was the fourth in a row in which a coordinated group of volunteers has come together to clean up that litter in an effort to preserve pristine Lake Baikal — the Pearl of Siberia.

]]>lyampolskySpanning time zones for a joint UK-US Bai-callhttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/ukusbaicall/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/ukusbaicall/#respondFri, 27 Jun 2014 21:14:43 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1650Continue reading →]]>This week the U.S.-based Baikal Dimensions team sat down for a Skype with a U.K.-based Baikal team to update each other on our respective projects, and look for areas where we can help each other and collaborate. Our first joint Bai-call! Many but not all of us met in-person last year at what we all thought might be Lake Baikal’s first tweet-up (or at least the first one at Bolshie Koty?)!

In 2013, a UK-based team of Baikal researchers met our team at ISU’s Bolshie Koty research station. Not quite what our Skype call this week looked like, but this is how we might imagine it! Photo: Kara Woo, 2013.

The U.S.-based team recently had a chance to coalesce a lot of our work at the in-person All Hands Meeting on the Dimensions project, so we turned on a firehose of information about our work from genomics to time series statistics, and then braced ourselves as they reciprocated – it was 90 minutes jam-packed with information, a great science exchange! As we all anticipated, it elicited a number of topics on which we will stay in touch – from nutrient-temperature-plankton relationships, to DOC-microbial dynamics, to the biogeochemistry of seal teeth!

Shoreline of Lake Baikal near Bolshie Koty. This blog post is about a Skype call – I can’t bring myself to post a picture of people on a Skype call, so let’s look at the lake instead! Photo: Stephanie Hampton, 2013.

]]>https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/ukusbaicall/feed/0sehamptonIn 2013, UK-based team of Baikal researchers met our team at ISU's Bolshie Koty research station. Not quite what our Skype call this week looked like, but this is how we might imagine it! Photo: Kara Woo, 2013.Shoreline of Lake Baikal near Bolshie Koty. This blog post is about a Skype call - I can't bring myself to post a picture of people on a Skype call, so let's look at the lake instead! Photo: Stephanie Hampton, 2013.Message in a Microscopehttps://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/message-in-a-microscope/
https://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/message-in-a-microscope/#commentsTue, 17 Jun 2014 17:16:02 +0000http://baikaldimensions.wordpress.com/?p=1647Continue reading →]]>Today’s post comes from Elena Litchman:

Kirill has been very successful growing multiple strains of the Baikal’s endemic diatom Aulacoseira baicalensis! To the point that it is communicating with him–its filaments are growing as words (see the photo)! It surely helps that both Kirill and Aulacoseira baikalensis are Baikal expats. Kirill is growing multiple strains at a range of temperatures and we will be taking samples for transcriptomics, proteomics and lipid analyses to understand why Aulacoseira baicalensis is a psychrophile (cold-loving organism).